Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/168

 clx rREFACE. the previous patronage of St. Peter disappeared from its annals. During the century which extended from the conquest of Dahiada by Angus MacFergiis to the re-establishment of the Scots under Kenneth Mac Alpin, St. Andrew remained the patron saint of the whole kingdom, and the church at St. Andrews the head of the Pictish Church. Return of Co- It is hardly possible to suppose that the Columban cCTgy- Qjj^-jj.(,]j ^l^^g ejected from the Pictish kingdom, and her clergy deprived of their ecclesiastical establish- ments in that part of the country, should have quietly acquiesced in their defeat, or given up the desire and the hope one day to recover their footing among the people whom their founder had con- verted ; and we may well believe that the whole of the Irish Church, of which they were but an offshoot, shared in the feeling. It is hardly possible, there- fore, to doubt that, among the causes which led to the revolution which placed a Scottish dynasty on the Pictish throne, not the least influential must have been an effort on the part of the Columban clergy to recover possession of their old establish- ments. That such was one great cause of the over- throw of the Pictish kingdom, is indicated in the " Pictish Chronicle," which states, " Deus enim eos " pro merito sue maUtie alienos ac otiosos heredi- " tate dignatus est facere : quia illi uon solum Domini " missam ac preceptum spreverunt ; sed in jure " equitatis aliis equiparari noluerent." They were